Archive for March, 2012

Welcome to day six of the Moonkin Round-Up, which is also the first day I actually have Beta to do my own reports.

I have just a few changes I want to report on, and I hope to get some videos up tomorrow for all of you.

Astral Form was adjusted, it looks like. You’re still the translucent ghost form, but there’s lightning that streaks around you and little glowy whisps that depart your body. I feel very much like Edward from Twilight.

Astral Form is an actual different buff titled ‘Astral Form’. Casting incarnation reverts you back to normal moonkin form while it’s active.

Crit gained from intellect was scaled back. I went from about 20% crit to 12% crit.

Addons are currently disabled, so I have no way of really judging DPS at this point.

After speaking with huth in the MMO-Champion druid forums, he has confirmed that this is indeed not a nerf, but a buff to Astral Storm. Previously it was doing about half the damage of Hurricane. It’s now doing the same damage as Hurricane, the equivalent Solar version of the same spell. If the base damage was indeed reduced, the co-efficient was apparently raised considerably.

Lissanna has been my guinea pig and done a bit of testing for me today. Thanks for putting up with all the questions!

It has been confirmed that revive and rebirth do indeed work in Moonkin form, so no need to waste a global cooldown with shifting back in after a combat rez.

In case you’re not aware, Prime Glyphs have been removed. Most glyphs now are for utility and not a straight throughput.

Moonkin PvE probably won’t have many options for major glyphs. Most likely: Stampede, Rebirth, and Moonbeast.

Glyph of the Moonbeast really hasn’t been discussed much, and it wasn’t covered in the most recent MMO-Champion glyph post. I’d like to go over it now.

You can now cast Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, and Tranquility without cancelling Moonkin Form.

This glyph will have a lot of utility, and I know I’ll enjoy being able to toss a rejuv on myself if needed, without burning a GCD to shift back into Moonkin Form. As for the PVP aspect, I think it’s going to be a huge boon.

The tooltip for Moonkin Form still shows that shifting will break movement impairing effects, so the ‘Disentanglement’ talent should be pretty worthless for us.

Hold on 1 sec… I really thought this was a joke! Are they really gone mental or something? Every pvp team, will have a druid, if not 2 or all being preferable, depending on the implementation of the spell. Its so ridicules I’m sure that everyone who ever had a nut-ball idea for their favourite class (myself included) will now actually believe they can have the ‘stealth circus-pegasus noob discriminator’ ability w/o gcd (not included here)! Apart from the practical imbalance, there are some ethical rules being cast aside – are we not all equal in the blizzard god’s eyes?? Well, I thought we were at least supposed to be (even if some are less fortunate and have to eat out of dumpsters every now and again) and that there was a pretension to the idea that ‘we are all the blessed children. Even you Ele Sham, your ugliness makes all greater for your departure to the graveyard’. But hold on, now things have changed! You could say that the DK was a touch evangelistic- everyone gets one, robs all good stuff from the poor kid (enhance D': ), laughing heartily etc, etc but here we go, the messiah himself, the first coming has been taken over by the pagans and the big J has arrived dressed in any ‘ol varmet’ hat he can get his head under so as he can dole out ‘favours for favours’. Everyone wants a piece of him now – they’l want to be him, they’l want to know him, do his laundry, clean his feet, no one will actually want to be anyone else but Big J, and eventually they’l take over america, i mean azeroth. My point is that, this is something like a phenomenon – I mean, I just realised that I wasted my SoR boost to L80 on a flippin mage! Actually, it is a joke,.. yes, i’m sure now. All of those who got there boost on Big J are gonna find out April 1 that, in fact, you just cant have that ‘stealt circus pegasus’ even in fantasy land there are rules! THINK of the RUUUUULES wont you please think…. yes, in the end surely it will something like ‘you can give an ability to another player until you are but a naked toon who has learned his lesson from big J that being greedy and wanting to have everything everyone else has is not always the greatest cause for your actions to find fruit’. Happy 4/1, roll on 21/12 when the druids are in charge!

Just like in Cataclysm, some old glyph IDs are being re-used for the new glyphs, that means if you want to have these new glyphs in MoP Beta, you need to learn the same item ID on live. Here’s the conversions:

One thing that may initially be confusing as you look at Pandaria tooltips is the very high ‘base mana cost’ of spells, especially if you compare them to a mage or a warlock. This is not a cause of concern.

A mage or warlock has a 100k base mana pool. (Mana pool is no longer influenced by your intellect). Druids have a 20k base mana pool (due to Feral and Guardian druids). Restoration and Balance druids learn ‘Celestial Insight’ at level 10, which increases our mana pool by 400%. (Thus giving us a 100k mana pool).

The base mana costs are of the base 20k pool, so while it may seem alarming to see Hurricane cost 75% of our base mana, in reality, that’s only 15k mana. A mage’s blizzard costs only 5% base mana, 5k.

Is Hurricane still 3x the cost of a similar spell, Blizzard? Sure, however we also now gain 35% of our entire mana pool back every time we hit an Eclipse. Last I checked, mages do not have that sort of constant mana return.

I earlier reported that Eclipse was being buffed to 20% baseline damage. That’s actually incorrect. Eclipse is being nerfed to 20% baseline damage.

While Eclipse used to provide 16% baseline damage (and the armory still reports this when you mouse over mastery), it was increased in live to a 25% boost, thus, the baseline is actually being nerfed by 5%.

Overall, Eclipse will still scale better with mastery, as each point of mastery will grant us 2.5% versus 2.0%. I believe this was the main intention, to give us an attractive stat outside of haste.

To overcome the nerf to base mastery, you simply need 2.00 mastery. Anything above that will be more damage then the current form.

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P"